Swift - Starting the New Year training with Swift 1/7/13 - A long read...

Thank you so much. That is fantastic and just what I was looking for. I just called my terminal and told them to accept both preplans for me.

I just wanted to make sure that you guys weren't actually buried in and I was heading into that. Looks like I'll heading up there, down to VA, down to N. Carolina and then to Laredo.

 

You guys are right. 90 was clear as could be despite the feet of snow off to the sides. They do a good job up there with clearing the snow. I stopped at that small rest area on 90 before the Canandaigua exit to shut down last night and drove the remaining 15 miles to the shipper this morning.

The load is wine from a place called Constellation. For the first time ever I had a shipper verify that I have a certain permit. They wanted to see my NY Alcohol permit was up to date. They loaded me quick, under an hour.

From that point on the roads got pretty messy. I only drove about 250 miles today. Felt like a long day with all the slow speed snow driving. Once I got into Penn cutting south on secondary roads things got real messy and my speed stayed between 35-45 mph. It was that sloppy kind of surface snow that keeps covering the road without leaving any clear traffic lines to trace with my tires. With an hour left on my 70 I realized that I wouldn't make it to my planned stop at a Walmart in W. Virginia for tonight.

Found a spot in the Carlisle, PA Petro parking lot about 6 miles from the main building. Still snowing here. My delivery is due Monday morning in VA. I have about 350 more miles and only about 5.5 hours coming back on my 70 to drive tomorrow so I'm not going to make it all the way down tomorrow as originally planned. Looks like I'll have to wait until I get some hours back early Monday morning and finish the remaining miles. Its gonna be close but as long as I can drop this and pick up that next load in N. Carolina taking me to Laredo then I know I'll be seeing some dry, snow-free ground soon.

Trucker Lesson Learned For Today: In bad weather learn to manage my hours better so that I don't run them down driving slow in bad weather. At least the consider it. In retrospect I would have been better served maybe shutting down earlier and conserving my available drive hours on my 70. But the down side to that is if the weather doesn't get better than I might be questioned later why I had so few miles. I guess its a gamble.

 

Thanks for the info. It helped. It wasn't too bad today. Last night was a breeze.

Its always interesting to see how well people up here and in the NE in general drive in the snow compared to other places. Didn't see one accident last night or today.

 

Yeah the roads were great. Passing by Buffalo I was looking down the city side streets and noticing how much snow they actually have had this season. Pretty incredible. Yet 90 was as clear and dry as could be.

I'm thankful for my EZ Pass when it comes to those tolls.